Fake IDs a threat, says AFP

The Australian Federal Police is stepping up its efforts to counter identity crime, amid concerns that border security could be threatened.

AFP commissioner Mick Keelty told a convention on national security last week that identity fraud was of growing concern, with the global potential "to threaten e-commerce, border security and counter terrorism responses".

He said: "Technological advances over recent years have created a range of options for obtaining or producing fraudulent identity documents that are high quality, low cost and increasingly easy to access."

Transnational crime, including identity fraud, was particularly active in South-East Asia, he said. But law enforcement agencies had also benefited from technological advances in detecting and monitoring such crime.

State and federal police acknowledge that people involved in such scams work across national and international borders. "From an international perspective we're concerned with the ability of criminals to purchase what we call Australian identifiers from other countries - even parts of documents," said Shane Connelly, a federal agent and the AFP's national manager for economic and special operations.

"Criminal elements can source these things from anywhere. It could be passports or licences - anything that goes to verifying who a person is. These can all be created elsewhere through copying technologies."

Mr Connelly added: "The role of the AFP is to protect the Commonwealth from fraudulent documents. No one law-enforcement agency does this alone. We work with the state police and the banking sector, because each agency creates documents that can be manipulated.

"It is not so much that the crime has increased but that the sophistication has increased. Identity crime is an enabling crime; it can enable terrorists and drug traffickers to steal Australian 'identifiers'. That's what makes it hard to measure."

The AFP has 14 identity crime taskforces in the states and territories, and last year set up the Australia High Tech Crime Centre to investigate computer crime, including fraudulent banking websites, online child pornography and hacking.

The taskforces link the AFP with several partners, including the Customs Service, Australia Post, Austrak and Centrelink.

Mr Keelty said that delegates at the police commissioners' conference had agreed to establish "protocols for combating fraud and identity crime following a terrorist incident or national disaster".

The AFP would not elaborate on the details. But Mr Connelly said: "After a natural disaster, if people's identity has been destroyed we need to quickly restore (it). Imagine someone saying 'I'm a victim of a flood; all my identity documents have been destroyed'. Criminals could use this."

He said the AFP recommended that "all identity management technologies be explored with all stakeholders, whether it's the banking sector or others, and that includes the privacy commissioner".

The Federal Privacy Commissioner, Malcolm Crompton, recently warned that poor identity management solutions could lead to "comprehensive surveillance of everyone".

The growth of fraud, he said, "has meant that organisations find they trust everyone less. To some extent, then, everyone is treated as somewhat suspect".